Promised Land

Rated R106 minutes2012

Matt Damon and Frances McDormand are energy company operatives sent into dying farm towns to buy up the natural-gas drilling rights, and their work's cut out for them in one target community when charming environmental activist John Krasinski starts winning hearts and minds with his antifracking spiel. Damon and Krasinski wrote the script from a story by Dave Eggers, and a cynical plot twist near the end elevates it above the usual issue drama. But a love triangle involving the two men and a local schoolteacher (Rosemarie DeWitt) seems more like a commercial necessity than an integral part of the story, and the small-town types are indifferently realized by director Gus Van Sant, a last-minute replacement for Damon. With Hal Holbrook and Scoot McNairy.
ByJ.R. Jones